Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Lemon Olive Oil Cake


My friend Julia said she wanted to make a cake the first night I was up in Seattle for one of her friends. This was just a perfect excuse to try one of the many olive oil cake recipes I'we been seeing lately.




It turned out delicious! My friends liked it ^_^



Lemon Olive Oil Cake
from I nom things

Ingredients:
8 oz. flour
8 oz. soy milk
4 oz. sugar
4 oz. olive oil + some for oiling up the pans
4 oz. silken tofu
2 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
one lemon
about 3/4 cup powdered sugar

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350F, oil up 9 slots in a regular-sized cupcake-tin.
2. In a blender, combine olive oil, tofu, soy milk, and sugar and blend until smooth.
3. In a large bowl, combine baking powder, flour, and salt together.
4. Add the wet olive oil-tofu mix into the dry mix. Over the large bowl, zest the lemon and combine into batter.
5. Pour the mix into the 9 oiled cupcake cups, and bake for 50 minutes, or until golden brown.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Vegan Chocolate-chip Cookies

This is Julia's fall-back recipe for cookies. A classic!

Vegan Chocolate-chip Cookies
adapted from a Unbelievably Delicious Vegan Cocount Cookies

Ingredients:

2 sticks margarine
1/2 bag vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 1/4 cups flour
1 packed cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
2 eggs worth egg replacer
1/2 T. water

Instructions:
1. Heat oven to 375 F.
2. Combine flour, salt, and baking soda.
3. In another bowl, cream all sugar and the margarine.
4. Add egg replacer, vanilla extract, and water to sugar mix. Stir
5. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and beat until combined.
6. Make small golf-ball sized dough balls, placed a golf-ball's length away from other dough balls on the cookie sheet.
7. Bake until golden-brown, about 14 minutes.

Chocolate-Covered Corn Chips

While in Seattle, I was presented with corn chips and dark chocolate. My first thought? Cover them!


Ingredients:
Corn chips
Dark chocolate

Instructions:

1. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler.
2. Line a cookie sheet in wax paper, wax side up.
3. Cover as much of the chip as you want in chocolate. Possibly, double dip.
4. Place covered chips on the wax paper in a single layer. Once finished covering the chips, place the cookie sheet into the freezer until chocolate has hardened.

Vegan Lasagna

While staying with my friend Julia in Seattle last week, I decided to make lasagna. Not only did it have home-made noodles, it was completely vegan! Very exciting. It turned out well, and I'm excited for my future lasagna exploits.


Vegan Lasagna
adapted from All Recipes

Ingredients:
1 jar tomato sauce
6 fresh lasagna noodles
1 package firm tofu
1 package soft tofu
1/2 t salt
1/2 t black pepper
2 T. olive oil
1 package fresh spinach

Instructions:
1. Heat oven to 375 F.
2. Place the olive oil and the spinach into a skillet over medium heat, and stir until all spinach is limp and dark green.
3. Place all tofu, salt, pepper, and spinach into a bowl. Mash tofu with fork, and mix all together until desired consistency (mix less if you like texture in your sudo-ricotta layer, or mix more if you like smooth ricotta like in manicotti)
4. Place a layer of tomato sauce in a 9x13 plan. Then place a layer of three noodles across, then all the tofu mix. Alternate another layer of sauce, noodles, and top with more sauce.
5. Place in oven, and bake for 50 mins.

Vegan Lasagna Noodles

Inspiration for this recipe was needing some vegan lasagna noodles, and not having any! They were pretty simple to make, and I'd like to try and improve on this recipe. They came out a decent texture, too, even though I didn't use semolina flour.



Vegan Lasagna Noodles
slightly adapted from ehow

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. Italian herb mix
1/4 t. garlic powder
3/4 cups warm water

Instructions:
1. Mix dry ingredients
2. Add water to dry ingredients, and stir until as well mixed as possible.
3. Place dough on floured surface and work dough until there is an even texture in the dough and it's all one piece.
4. Cut dough into 6 pieces, and roll each one out so that it's a foot long and three inches wide.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Ginger Tea


While in Hawaii, I went to the farmers' market there. So excellent, with all the fresh foods, fruits, and vegetables all year around! Not to mention the truly gorgeous orchids and hibiscus flowers for sale, and the largest avocado's you've ever seen. Unfortunately, a lot of the products seen there were imported and there was tons of prepared food, instead of a plethora of farmers with their produce. None the less, it was a great experience, one that I would like to enjoy again in the future.




From the market, I got probably 2 lbs. of ginger for 2$. That, I'm sure, was local. I got it onto the air plane back home (I don't know for sure if it was contraband or not), and now have some great, fresh, juicy ginger to work with. One recipe I stumbled across in my Vegetarian times for ginger tea. This is very simple, as you'll see below, but quite tasty. My suggestions, though: put the ginger in a tea-brewing ball, or strain the tea after letting it seep for a time. It will turn into a nice yellow-y color, like yellow curry. It gets incredibly strong if you simply let the ginger sit at the bottom of your cup the entire time you're drinking it. It gets pretty intense.





Ginger Tea
Recipe as found in Vegetarian Times May/June 2009 edition

Ingredients:
2 t. grated ginger
1 cup boiling water

Instructions:

To grate: peel ginger by using fingernail to peel off outer skin. Then grate with the large-hole part of the grater. If you try to use the small-holes to grate, the ginger just turns to juice in your hands. Also, if strings start to build up at the grating end, I just cut those off and include them in the grated pile.

1. Place ginger into a standard tea-cup. Fill with the 1 cup boiling water, and let steep.
2. When the flavor is to taste, remove the grated ginger by straining.

Hint: the 2 t. of grated ginger easily makes 2 cups of tea. Make sure to re-use it! Ginger is expensive in the Midwest

Vegan Pizza


Alas! Another pizza post. But, this one's vegan! So it's different and interesting... right? I wanted to review some vegan products. So, this pizza gave me a chance.


Daiya: This cheeze was very interesting. If you're expecting the taste/texture of mozzarella, you're not going to find it. It has an almost sour taste, and a thick creaminess when it melts. It's not bad, but not my favorite. Worth a try. I can see myself buying this again when I try a month of vegan-ness (next school year!)

Yves pepperoni: I greatly enjoyed this product. I placed it on top of the pizza, and it got nice and crunchy. It has good flavor, and I see myself buying this product in the future.

(in breakfast cereal commercial voice) Part of this complete vegan meal!


Vegan Pizza: vegan cheeze, pepperoni, spinach, and walnuts

Ingredients:
Yves vegan pepperoni
daiya mozzarella style shreds
hy-vee (or any other brand that makes a vegan crust) pizza crust
any vegan pizza sauce
3 T. toasted walnuts
small handful spinach

Instructions:
1. Heat oven according to crust package instructions
2. Use entire bag of cheeze, pepperoni to taste, pizza sauce to taste, and all walnuts and handful of spinach.

Hard-boiled egg and Avocado Sandwich



This was an accidental discovery. On the plane on the way to Hawaii, I had an avocado, a hard boiled egg, some salt and pepper, a plastic knife, and bread. I thought, hey, why not make a sammich! Surprisingly delicious. So much so, I thought I would share with the world. : )

Hard-boiled egg and Avocado Sandwich

Ingredients:
1 avocado
1 hard-boiled egg
1 slice of bread of choice (or bagel half, etc.)
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
1. Cut avocado in half, removing pit. Put salt to taste inside each of the avocado halves, and mash avocado with fork in the skin. Then, paste onto the slice of bread.
2. Slice the hard-boiled egg, and layer across the avocado.
3. Sprinkle pepper on top to taste.